A Fort Bragg crowd once again shouted "NO" at the United States Navy at a public hearing March 7 on a new plan for increased weapons testing and training from Alaska to Cape Mendocino.

The "just say no" message about the expanded 2015-2020 Draft Northwest Training and Testing Range Environmental Impact Statement was the same reaction as five years ago when the Navy came to town.

This new range area combines three ranges into one for 2015 to 2020, meaning the new area will run from Humboldt County to Alaska. More than 90 percent of this range's military testing and training still happens in the Puget Sound area. And Mendocino County is still outside the range.

Meeting

Mendocino Coast activists took the Navy by surprise the last time, leading the Navy to hold several meetings in Fort Bragg and causing delays in the project. This time around, both the Navy and the local protesters were better organized.

Last Friday's open house was held at the Redwood Coast Senior Center in Fort Bragg from 5 to 8 p.m., with a presentation at 6:30 p.m.

Before the Navy gave the presentation and locals got a chance to speak, informational stations gave people the ability to ask questions one on one with lawyers, scientists and uniformed personnel. The Navy made it clear there would be no responses to those who gave speeches that night. A court reporter would take down everything and make it part of the record.

At one of the stations, Shaarie Unger, range operations environmental coordinator for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center-- Division Keyport, said there have been no documented injuries in this range to marine mammals caused by Naval training. She admitted that documenting is difficult to do. She creates strategies for training personnel on how to avoid environmental injuries and how to locate marine mammals.

"The Navy is self-reporting in many cases ... and the results of impacts may not be seen for such a long time it would be hard to determine the cause," said Rosalind Peterson, a former government official who has long led opposition to the Naval training and now testing.

Peterson asked again for something the Navy has inexplicably never provided a map of all the testing and training ranges and an indication of which are increasing testing and training. Critics and journalists have asked for this map since 2009 but it has not been part of the process.

"The Navy has permits to take marine mammals in each of these ranges," Peterson said.

Comment due

John Mosher, who has led the process of explaining the testing ranges for more than five years, said that 13 ranges, along the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, Alaskan and Hawaiian coasts have been consolidated down into five.

Public comment is due by March 25. A final plan will then be released, with more public comment possible. That comment and plan is then taken and turned into a proposed record of decision by the Secretary of the Navy.

The Navy's current five-year permit for all three (Pacific Northwest and Southern Alaskan) ranges expires in 2015.

The Navy has created a single process to continue and expand its activities. Mosher said the Navy has never done some of the activities it got permission for under the plan. The new plan does not include any onshore activities or activities for other services, as the current one did.

Ultimately, the plan must get permits from the Marine Mammal Service for taking of whales.

Lawsuit

The contrast between the unemotional and scrupulously polite Naval team and a fired up and occasionally rude crowd was a repeat of five years ago.

"This is a dog and pony show, that's the official name for it," said Rex Gressett of Fort Bragg, during a rousing opposition speech.

A uniformed Matt Hahn, a former fighter pilot with combat experience who served in Afghanistan leading a drone unit that searched for roadside bombs, started the meeting with an explanation of why the Navy needs the training and testing range.

"Although not a frequent requirement in the Pacific Northwest, the Navy must also train and test with explosives ? training in a high stress environment where explosives are being used is necessary," Hahn said.

At one point Hahn was interrupted by a heckler. "You are not going to convince anyone here. ? you are wasting our time," said the voice.

Hahn paused then continued, "I bet you didn't know ?." He told about the Navy's leading role on scientific research into whales. The Navy was compelled to increase its research into the effects of its sonar on marine mammals as part of a 2008 settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

A brand new lawsuit was filed by the NRDC on March 6, the day before the Fort Bragg meeting. This lawsuit is against the National Marine Fisheries Service, saying the federal agency was wrong to approve the Navy's plan for the expanded training in the Pacific Northwest.

The suit challenges the Navy's method of searching for marine mammals before using sonar. Instead, the suit says, the federal regulators should require the Navy simply not use sonar in certain areas.

Applause

Hahn got a decent applause from the crowd when he sat down. But the interrupter of Hahn was correct. Most locals were there to oppose warfare and any harm to whales, not to pick among the options offered in the massive draft environmental impact statement.

"I don't consider our department of defense a reality. I consider it a department of offense, you are offending our marine creatures, you are offending me and my children," said county resident Sheila Dawn Tracy.

"I don't want to hear that you will be taking more marine life to prepare for the next great war. ... I want the Navy to deal with the Pacific gyre, all that awful plastic in the ocean. That's something good the Navy can do. That's a real threat, not a fantasy war game. I want to feel good about the Navy. I want my children to feel good about the Navy," Tracy said.

One of the biggest applauses came for Janie Rezner, coast resident, who spelled out higher reasons for opposing military "war games" than found among the thousands of pages of the draft EIS.

"We cannot fail to see or read about the diminishing of all life in a patriarchal world, where life itself has no meaning ... species rapidly disappearing, an earth covered with poisons and toxins and radiation, lack of clean air and water, loss of fish in a dying ocean, an increasingly violent climate everywhere, children starving and dying and being tortured along with their mothers and fathers, surrounded by war and the industries and corporate powers that serve war, polluting and poisoning life for generations to come, as the greed of capitalist patriarchal power continues to destroy life at a faster and faster rate, until it is done, it seems, all in the name of money," Rezner said.